No Grasp of Your Reality

100+ degrees in Tampa. The Eagles are losing. McNabb throws a touchdown, pukes, recovers, throws another touchdown.

That’s pretty cool.

I woke up this morning, and found out my new baby daughter had set up a myspace.

http://www.myspace.com/poopiegurl06

Leah’s doing fantastic!

She’s eating well, very alert and much loved by her siblings.

Everyone is asking “does she sleep through the night?”

Um, no.

Newborns do NOT sleep through the night.
Newborns eat and poop through the night.

But, these things indicate that she is thriving and I don’t mind waking up every two hours.

However, I think Alarm Clock Duty needs to be delegated as, in my stupor, I tend to hit the “Alarm Off” button and immediately fall back asleep. (The outlet is on my side of the bed.) Poor Tom’s been waking up to the morning heart attack of, “Crap! You have TEN MINUTES before you have to leave for work! I must have hit “OFF” again! SO SORRY!”

Today I am celebrating because I’m comfortably wearing my regular jeans!

Two weeks ago, my wife let me purchase a Nintendo DS for something to keep me busy during my long flights overseas. Today, I completed the New Super Mario Brothers games. By defeated, I mean I earned three stars by beating the game, grabbing and spending every gold coin, and defeating every level (including alternate exits). I am truly master of the mundane.

A couple months ago, I came across an interesting concept on the Internet, and now that I’ve got a little bit of money to play with, I’m considering looking into it.

The website is prosper.com, and the idea is what they call “people-to-people lending”. The concept is that banks make a lot of money lending to customers, and they’re trying to get those profits into the hands of normal people.

Let’s say I wanted to borrow $5,000 to purchase a motorcycle. I would log onto Prosper and fill out the normal information that a borrow needs to fill out to get a loan. Prosper will then perform a credit check and assign a person a “rating”, from “AA” to “E”. There are also two other categories called “HR” for high risk, and “NC” for those with no credit.

After I’ve created my account, I then put up a listing (here’s an example), where I state that I’d like to borrow a certain amount at a certain interest rate, to be repaid over a certain amount of time. Then, other Prosper users will bid on my listing. No one person will put up the $5,000, but individuals will put up smaller chunks, from $50, up to maybe $200. If I want to be sure that the person takes my money, I might lower the interest rate from 10% to 9.8%.

The rates online are better than cd’s, and although there is some risk in the loans, since they’re spread out over multiple borrowers, it lowers the risk of the investment. A friend of mine at work has been doing this for a few months and has seen a consistant 14% return on his loans.

I’ll let you know it turns out…

While I like to encourage toddlers to eat without help, a problem they seem to have is gaging how much food to put in their mouth while taking a bite. I know from experience that it’s certainly not cool to have to stick a finger into the mouth of a gagging shark to try to retrieve half a sandwich.

Here’s a tip to help them with their eating independence:

When making sandwiches, use scissors to snip the sandwich into bite-size pieces.

I like this method because:

• it’s less tedious than when using a serrated knife for the same task
• you don’t need a cutting board (yet another dish to wash) – just hold the sandwich in your hand
• it’s FAST.

To make about 1/2 inch sized cubes, I cut the sandwich into rectangles and then cut the short side into strips, almost all the way to the crust. It resembles paper “fringe” for a craft project. Then, cut the “fringe” in half going lengthwise (detaching the pieces from the sandwich into cubes). Next, snip the remaining strips all the way through the crust.

This method works well with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or other types of sandwiches with a moist filling (like finely cut chicken or tuna fish salad, egg salad, etc.).

It only works with meat and cheese sandwiches if there is “glue” involved, like mayonaise or mustard. An extra “glue” layer between the meat and the cheese and pressing down on the sandwich prior to snipping are tricks to making meat and cheese sandwiches hold together.

Here’s some PB&J trivia from Wikipedia to share with your kiddies while preparing their lunch:

Both peanut butter and jelly were packed with United States Army K-rations in World War II. The combination proved so popular that returning GIs made peanut butter and jelly a standard American food… Peanut butter and jelly has been available in the military instant food Meal, Ready-to-Eat (MRE) for many years. The sandwich can survive in the field for up to three years.

For more on the invention of the sandwich, including their how they got their namesake after the Earl of Sandwich, click here.

Tabitha : “Aiden, you’re a domino!”

Aiden: “No I’m NOT!”

Tabitha: “Yes you are – you always fall down!”

—

Tabitha: “I know everything.”

Thomas: “Do you know where God came from?”

Tabitha: “no….”

Thomas “Then you don’t know everything.”

Found on the Internets with no attribution…

The British are feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and Security threats and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved.” Soon, though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross.”

Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to a “Bloody Nuisance.” The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the great fire of 1666.

Also, the French government announced yesterday that it has raised its error alert level from “Run” to “Hide.” The only two higher levels in France are “Surrender” and “Collaborate.” The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralyzing the country’s military capability.

It’s not only the English and French that are on a heightened level of alert. Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout Loudly and Excitedly” to “Elaborate Military Posturing.” Two more levels remain: “Ineffective Combat Operations” and “Change Sides.”

The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdainful Arrogance” to “Dress in Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.” They also have two higher levels: “Invade a Neighbor” and “Lose.”

Belgians, on the other hand, are all on holiday as usual, and the only threat they are worried about is NATO pulling out of Brussels.

“Besides, since it is not at all fitting for us to be upset every time our doing well brings bad reports to our ears, so it is only those who are troubled by their own guilt who show themselves unduly credulous by listening to whispers and false accusations” (Calvin, Concerning Scandals, p. 90). [quoted in Blog and Mablog]

One afterthought on my last post. My friend that I mentioned in the last post commented that cynical humor is often the bailiwick of modern non-Christian humorists. While non-Christian cynical humorists agree with me that people (at least Republicans) are inherently sinful, their ability to laugh at the sin comes from their nihilism. They can laugh because the end of their life comes to nothing, so there’s nothing to do to fix the problem. All you can do is laugh and cry. It explains why many comedians are in therapy for depression.

green tea in my cup
cold awakening my mind
how i miss Japan

Weird Al has posted his new song online, entitled “You’re Pitiful“. It’s a parody of that annoying “You’re Beautiful” song.

I’m going to go out on a limb and make a prediction. After all the lastest health fads like Atkins and Tae Bo, America is in need of a new health fad. Submitted for your approval, “Sumo health exercises“.

When Sarah and I travelled to Tokyo together (twice in the last couple years), we were blessed to be able to worship at Mitaka Evangelical Church. I found this inteview with Ralph Smith, the pastor of Mitaka, on WordMP3 via Mark Horne’s blog. It’s short (about 10 minutes), but it’s an interesting interview about missions in Japan.

By the way, this is what an “aside” looks like. These are where I can put random little musings like the following: During my upcoming trip to Japan in August, I’m planning to hike to the top of Mt. Fuji. Now, I’m a bit worried about trying to get my 300 lb frame to the top of the mountain, but how bad could it be?